1950 Fund Holding Gains
THE CHALLENGE AND INTEREST associated with the 1950 Alumni Fund campaign centers in this question: Can the Fund organization and alumni respond to the needs of the College in sufficient measure to achieve the $400,000 goal which represents the forecast needs? As of May 12, which was the campaign's mid-point in terms of time, the answer was not clear, but the indications were that the goal would be met.
As of May 12 the Fund Office reported 5,772 gifts for $178,745, or a participation of 31% and a dollar figure representing 45% of the objective. The encouraging note lay in the fact that both of these figures were substantially greater than at the same time last year when 5,227 gifts and $153,125 had been received.
This improvement was traceable to the early and effective work of the class agents in getting earlier gifts and to the response made by better than 25% of the contributors through increasing their gifts. Class after class was showing substantial net increases in their gifts to that date. If these trends in participation and more thoughtful giving continue through the last half of the campaign the $400,000 goal should be made.
Special honor at this mid-campaign point was accorded the Class of 1890 which already had 100% participation, and the Classes of 1901 and 1903 with better than 100% of objective. Other leaders in their contemporary class groups were 1914, 1915, 1921, 1922, 1930, 1927, 1940, 1937, 1946, and 1945. The Class of 1949, participating in the Fund for the first time, had 112 contributors and $1,050, the best first-year record of any postwar class.
The Fund Committee has stressed the fact that although the proceeds of the campaign will be turned over to the Trustees for unrestricted use as usual, scholarship aid is one of the primary objectives of the campaign. The need for greater amounts of student aid (clearly defined in President Dickey's statement CharityPlus which was sent to all alumni by the Fund Committee) is so great as to constitute one of the major financial and budgetary problems confronting the College. This was brought home in the most impressive way by the fact that scholarships were not available for approximately sixty worthy applicants among the men admitted for the Class of 1954. Most of those men will not come to Dartmouth because that aid was unavailable.
Considering that even the present amount of scholarship funds would be seriously cut without the Alumni Fund, the importance to Dartmouth of a successful campaign this year is clearly evident.
